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On 3rd March, Availpro and Lagrange Holidays signed a contract for Availpro’s Smart Channel Manager to be used for the totality of Lagrange’s selection of residences. Availpro’s solution will be progressively rolled out for the group’s 174 holiday residences and 2 business residences (72,000 beds in all).
Benefits expected for Lagrange Holidays thanks to their partnership with Availpro Lagrange Holidays markets its offer via a range of different distribution channels: standard tour operators, dedicated travel agent platforms (such as Orchestra) as well as work councils and Internet distributors. Up until now, the company centralised all elements of its offer in a CRS (Central Reservation System) managed by technicians that acted upon sales and regulated the flux available to each user of the major channels.
Thanks to the connectivity set up between Availpro and their CRS, Lagrange Holidays will be able to automate the update of rates and availability information to all Availpro / Lagrange distributor sites. In return, Availpro will inform the Lagrange CRS of bookings in real-time. This means that stock data received by Availpro from the Lagrange CRS can also be used by traditional tour operators, no matter how small.
In addition to this automation, the company was looking for a simplified management system that allows all Internet distributors to be managed with just one planning and one stock.
Christophe Peterfalvi, Assistant Data Systems Manager at Lagrange Holidays, had this to say: “We were tentatively hoping to find a solution that would work as a sort of data exchange. Availpro allows us to centralise the quotas of several IDS in one place, one management system, without the risk of overbooking, whilst also making the exchange of data between the different lines of production easier. Technologically, when trying to implement automated data exchange, a tour operator such as Lagrange Vacances is confronted with a multitude of connectivity specificities from its partners. Setting up a connection with Bookings, another with Expedia (and so on for each IDS) takes months of work for each, analysing, developing, fine-tuning and – afterwards – in maintenance. By using Availpro, the only thing we will need to maintain for this multi-connectivity is the XFT language that we have chosen to use.”
Practical details of setting up the Availpro solution for the Lagrange Holidays residences
There will be a progressive rollout of the Availpro solution, starting with training and set-up in pilot residences in the leisure and business sectors. Following this pilot phase, implementation of Availpro’s Smart Channel Manager will continue to cover all residences.
Philippe Lamarche, President of Availpro’s Board of Directors, explains: “Our specialised know-how – initially orientated towards the independent hotel sector – is extremely effective when applied to other sectors such as residence complexes. Thanks to our system’s inherent flexibility, we can adapt just as easily to holiday residences that generally handle weekly bookings as we can to residences in urban areas where nightly bookings are more common, much like standard hotels.”
TravelDailyNews Asia-Pacific editorial team has an experience of over 35 years in B2B travel journalism as well as in tourism & hospitality marketing and communications.
